Company: Bus in fatal crash made in 2011, inspected days ago

Illinois State Police and emergency personnel prepare to remove a Megabus interstate bus that struck an overpass on I-55 five miles north of Litchfield, Ill. (Sid Hastings, for the Chicago Tribune)

The Megabus coach that crashed en route from Chicago, killing a graduate student from University of Missouri, was manufactured last year and “had passed a full preventative maintenance check within the past week,” the company says.

Megabus released the statement this morning as police continue to investigate why the bus lost control and crashed into a concrete pillar of an overpass on Interstate 55 south of Springfield Thursday afternoon. State police say they believe the bus blew a tire but are still looking at circumstances of the accident.

That investigation could take weeks, according to State Police Lt. Louis Kink said. No citations have been issued, and the police are not releasing the driver’s name.

“We’ve had no reports of erratic driving or anything along those lines,” Kink said. “From our witness statements, most of it’s leaning toward the tire malfunction.”

Megabus said in its statement that the recent inspection included the bus' tires. It said maintenance checks are performed every 10 days.

The bus, carrying more than 70 passengers, skidded into the center pillar of the overpass around 1:20 p.m. near Litchfield. As many as half of the passengers were injured, according to State Police Capt. Scott Compton. Four to five of them were trapped and had to be extricated, including the woman who died, Aditi R. Avhad, 25, he said.

Avhad was a dentist from Mumbai, India who was enrolled in the graduate program at the University of Missouri's School of Medicine, according to the school. She was studying for a master's degree in health administration and hoped to get her degree next year, officials said.

She was riding in the upper deck with her parents when the bus crashed, police said. Passengers said the impact sent them flying from their seats.

“I flew forward and my glasses were smashed into the back of the seat in front of me,” said Eliana Siegal, 16, of West Rogers Park. “People were panicking and babies were crying – a woman across the aisle from me was screaming that her leg was broken.”

Siegal, who was riding on the top tier of the double-decker bus, said she and other passengers rushed off the bus as quickly as they could out of fear it might explode. But the driver and at least one other passenger were trapped, she said.

“There was a lot of manpower spent trying to get the people who were trapped out of the bus,” Siegal said.

Siegal was taken to a community center in Litchfield. She said she was traveling alone, on her way to meet friends for a concert in St. Louis. Siegal said she believed she was uninjured because her father gave her a dollar to give to charity, a Jewish tradition that helped protect her en route.

"I believe it was that money that kept me out without a scratch," said Siegal.

On his way to Kansas City to see family, Michael Martin of Minneapolis said he was asleep but woke up on the floor with bloodied people standing all around him and screaming.

"All I heard was hollering and screaming, blood,"Martin said. "There was the front window."

"I was like, in shock, in a daze," said Martin, 36. "A guy grabbed me ... told me I was in shock, my neck was swollen all up."

One rider near the front was stuck from the waist up and hollering, a child was stuck in a seat but calmer, Martin said.